Canine Cognition Studies at Duke University

by Brad  Waggoner

We have just returned from our sec­ond trip to Durham, NC where we par­tic­i­pated in a study in canine cog­ni­tion at Duke Uni­ver­sity. Pro­fes­sor Brian Hare is test­ing hun­dreds of dogs to deter­mine how they make deci­sions. It seems that dogs in many ways process infor­ma­tion bet­ter than our clos­est rel­a­tives in nature, the chim­panzees and bono­bos. Last year Gib­son, our 6 year old Aussie, was invited to take part in the study. Now it was Cody’s turn. Cody is a 2 1/2 year old Aussie and is a bit more active than his older brother so we were inter­ested to see how he would do with the tasks he was given. The tasks were a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from our first visit but still designed to deter­mine whether the dog remem­bered what he saw first or what he saw last. There were also tasks to deter­mine whether there was a pref­er­ence for left or right, or one area over another based on his expe­ri­ences. All the dif­fer­ent responses will be ana­lyzed and com­pared with the responses of all the other dogs to pull together a bet­ter under­stand­ing of canine cog­ni­tive abilities.

All of this, of course, is fas­ci­nat­ing to us as it relates directly to how we train dogs. A bet­ter under­stand­ing of how a dog processes infor­ma­tion will lead to bet­ter train­ing tech­niques and a bet­ter rela­tion­ship with our dogs. You can read more about the Duke Canine Cog­ni­tion Cen­ter here.

http://evolutionaryanthropology.duke.edu/dogs